Pretty things: Niamh, and the Masters of the Renaissance

Well, it's not strictly travel related, but it is kind of, cos I did travel all the way to England to meet her a couple of weekends ago, and I think it's pretty interesting that I've actually met and cuddled the most beautiful, kissable, adorable, serene little spark of life in seven kingdoms, my family's NEW member, Niamh (pronounced Neeve). Me and Han spent the whole weekend fighting vigorously over who held/kissed/fed/winded/pushed the pram round Debenhams next.

Ere she is having a bath (which I'm sure she'll thank me for when she's a teenager)






















Travelly-type news news: we hired a car and drove to Firenze (that's Florence to the uninitiated in Italian i.e me until 2 weeks ago) last weekend. Cue some more crazy driving, this time on the autostrada through the rolling green hills of Tuscany, and then many, many turns around the one-way-no-lanes-bad-signage-worse-drivers roads within Florence city centre, a right kerfuffle it was finding the hostel. When we finally got there we didn't have a room with a view, but we did have a room with noisy teenagers outside the window til 3am, and we didn't quite have a phaeton, but did have a nice ford focus, which we found said noisy teenagers had keyed when we got up in Sunday morning... buggers.
Florence is good and its cool and it's nice and arty, it has lots of Americans and pikeys and uber-cool people riding round on very old bicycles.
Went for a walk by the Arno on Saturday and over the Ponte Vecchio (bridge) which has the oldest most ornate jewellery shops which look like oversized jewellery boxes when shut, all along it. Didn't see any tragic stabbings or owt, pretty uneventful. Then, baedeker in hand (well, not quite, free map from Macdonalds in hand), went sightseeing on Sunday, saw the Duomo, the 4th largest cathedral in the world apparently, which is a really wierd colour, and pretty impressive. Also went to the Ufizzi art museum which was amazing. Completely didn't do it justice tho 'cos I needed the toilet and ran straight to the second floor when they let us in, then they wouldn't let us go back down to the first floor to av a look! Bloody tight arses. Plus we didn't have much time anyway, but saw masterpieces by, like, every artist ever, see below for comprehensive, name-dropping list. It was cool as.

Raphael, Rubens, Donatello, Del Sarto, saw Da Vinci's Adoration of the Maggi, Carvaggio's Bacchus looking all alluring and sultry, Rembrandts self-portraits (young and old... poor bloke, had a hard life) and most memorably, Boticelli's Birth of Venus and the Allegory of spring, which are just massive and beautiful and breathtaking.